Jesus’ Parables of Lost Things & Missing the Point
The Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin, & the Lost Son of Luke 15
There are few Biblical narratives that have captured the attention of history and pop culture more than Jesus’ parables in the Gospel of Luke. The Good Samaritan, the Great Banquet, the wineskins, the Rich Fool, the Persistent Widow. It’s a great list, but the Prodigal Son is, quite possibly, the most famous.
As it goes with the Bible, familiarity can often make a passage increasingly unfamiliar. Like a river engraining itself in the landscape, a parable such as The Prodigal Son begins to be spoken of in one way and one way only — to the point that it becomes the only way people now understand the story. Diverting such an entrenched river may be a task in the impossible.
However — maybe I’m just a bit contrarian — but I have had the unique opportunity of not inheriting this parable in its singular interpretation. I was able to approach the text with untainted eyes. In doing so, I found the common title — both spoken from uncountable pulpits and conveniently placed as the heading in most Bibles — inconsistent with the substance of the narrative…
